County budget receives federal funding boost

Humboldt County's budget got a helping hand earlier this week after the county received its third highest payment from a federal government program since at least 1999, but county officials are not banking on it to be a lasting revenue source.

"It's hard to say if that is ongoing or one-time money," Assistant County Administrative Officer Cheryl Dillingham said.

Under the federal Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program, rural governments and communities are compensated for having non-taxable federal land such as national parks, wildlife refuges and recreation areas in their jurisdictions in order to help pay for local services such as housing, law enforcement, schools and social services. Humboldt County was one of 1,900 local governments across the nation who received a chunk of the record high $436.9 million program allocation, $45.3 million of which went to 58 local entities in California.

For the county's 2014-2015 fiscal year budget, Dillingham said her office was budgeting as of June 3 for the county to receive the same $604,608 program payment sum as it had last year. Instead, the U.S. Department of the Interior reported Tuesday that the county will receive $723,607 for the 496,164 acres in its jurisdiction in the upcoming fiscal year.

"That was more than we budgeted, so that's good," Dillingham said."I cannot necessarily speak on what we will do with the difference."

Dillingham said that the money would be placed into the discretionary fund of the county General Fund, which will allow the board to distribute them as they please.

Second District Supervisor Estelle Fennell said with the county only budgeting for the 2013 amount, the board will have to determine how the extra funds can be best used and how long the increase is going to last.

"With the addition of the $100,000 plus, we are researching into whether or not it is an ongoing revenue and whether or not we can count on it in the future," she said. "Certainly if we can count on it in coming years, there is the possibility of it being used for personnel costs."

The apprehension stems from the federal program only having a one-year budget for the 2014-2015 fiscal year under the Agriculture Act of 2014. Before the act passed, the program was funded by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act for 2013, and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 from 2008 to 2012. The Department of the Interior reported in its Tuesday press release that President Barack Obama's 2015 fiscal year budget is proposing to "extend mandatory full funding for the program for another year while a sustainable long-term funding solution is developed for the PILT program."

Without a guarantee for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, Fennell said they may use the extra funds to chip away at a portion of the county's $2.7 million General Fund deficit.

"If we don't know if we're getting it in the future, we might want to be looking at less of a structural deficit," Fennell said. "We have to wait and see what that research brings up."

Should the program fall through, Dillingham said it will have consequences.

"If we didn't get any of it, that would definitely be problematic," she said. "We put the payments in discretionary revenue and those funds are lumped together and allocated out to departments. Every single General Fund department gets a piece of the discretionary revenue. So if we lost it, it would be sort of the same thing, but instead we would have to cut somewhere where it cause the least impact. We are hopeful that it was going to be reauthorized."